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Giving credit to a forgotten architectural visionary

‘If I worked in the kitchen, I simply moved the kitchen to where the sandbox was, so I could keep an eye on her.’

With energy prices rising, Francois Massau, a local coal merchant-turned-builder who died here impoverished and alone in 2002 at the age of 97, is enjoying a small measure of posthumous fame, though not here in his hometown.

In the 1950s, when few people talked about ecology or conserving energy, Massau built what was among the earliest revolving homes. He built it in 1958 so his sickly wife, a schoolteacher, could enjoy sunshine and warmth any time of the day or the year: There often isn’t much of either in Belgium.

Today, as energy prices soar, revolving buildings have become fashionable. In southern Germany, Rolf Disch has built a solar-powered rotating house; in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, David Fisher, an Israeli-born Italian architect, plans an 80-story rotating skyscraper, the Dynamic Tower. Some call it sunflower architecture.

The technology Massau pioneered was so effective it still works today, and all three of the revolving houses he built remain operational. Yet on the 50th anniversary of his first house, there will be no ceremonies, no special tours or honors.

“There’s total indifference,” said Guy Otten, a retired journalist who often wrote about Massau. “He was always seen as eccentric. He was never appreciated here.”

He spent most of his later years unhappily in court battles with government agencies and building contractors. His wife and three of his four children died before he did, at least one, his son Julien, taking his own life.

“He did everything himself, alone, with his own hands, with no money, and maybe it was this that the family could not bear,” said Nicole Van Haren, a former neighbor. “It was a somber family.”

Even now, in a stylish neighborhood on a rise above Wavre, stands Massau’s first revolving house. Its circular brick and concrete foundation is stationary, supporting a steel track on which the house revolves, moved by a small electric motor. Its roof, a concrete slab supported by columns, is stationary, too.

“It’s the most beautiful house in Wavre,” said Dominique Quinet, a beautician who lives in the house and has her business there, too.

When her daughter was a toddler, she often played in the sandbox outside.

“If I worked in the kitchen,” Quinet said, “I simply moved the kitchen to where the sandbox was, so I could keep an eye on her.”

She pressed one of two green buttons on the living room wall and the house moved imperceptibly but for a slight creaking noise. She pressed a third, red button to stop it. The house moves slowly, making a full 360-degree turn in 90 minutes.

“If it’s warm, I can move the living room into the shade,” she said.

An ingenious part of the house is the tangle of plastic pipe and electrical switches in the cellar that assure a steady supply of water and electricity and removal of sewage waste even while the house is turning.

The 130m² house, which has four bedrooms, a kitchen and a large crescent-shaped living and dining room, is energy-efficient.

On sunny winter days, when there is snow outside, it can be a comfortable 21ºC inside without turning on the heating, Quinet said, if the house is turned to face the sunlight.

The people of Wavre are clearly divided in their view of Massau. In 1958, as he struggled to complete his first house in time for the opening of the Brussels World’s Fair, old photos show, local dignitaries, including Wavre’s mayor, admired his creation.

The dignitaries brought admiration, but no money. By 1968, Massau was forced to sell the house to Quinet’s father, Paul, to finance construction of more rotating houses. After paying Massau for the house, Paul Quinet extended loans to him, hoping to be repaid when Massau sold his houses.

“But he never sold them,” Quinet said. “My father would say: ‘Sell the houses, but pay me back.’ My father had to go to court. Mr Massau was not correct in his attitude. But then, he was not a businessman.”

Quinet’s father was not the only legal adversary. Over the years, court cases multiplied, as Massau sued government agencies and contractors who had worked for him. He became a sad figure.

“He went on hunger strikes, and I remember as a boy seeing him demonstrating in front of Town Hall with posters hung front and back, explaining his legal troubles,” recalled Jean-Marie Duquaine, spokesman for Wavre’s city government. “When he was 85 years old, he’d be out there distributing fliers explaining his lawsuits.”

Those who defend Massau say his was a typical case of the outsider crushed by the establishment.

“He was not an architect, he was not an engineer, he was not a builder,” said Philippe Willems, Massau’s grandson, who lives with his wife and two children in the second of Massau’s three houses, in Malonne, a village south of Wavre.

“He was a coal merchant, a mason. He sold everything to build his houses,” he said.

Willems’ parents bought the house from his grandfather so he would have money to keep building, he said.

“If you turn the house five times a day, you change your home, you change the light, you change everything,” he said. “I’m in love with this house.”

He said he had to replace the electric motor that drives the house this year, after 35 years, but has had almost no other mechanical problems.

This year, Quinet put her Massau house up for sale for US$507,000 because it was too big for her.

“I am alone, I don’t need it,” she said.

Despite its fame, it has drawn only one prospective buyer.

“People are mistrustful,” she said. “People think it’s expensive, difficult to maintain.”

“You need someone who is looking for something special,” she said.
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